SOLO MISSION “I’ve never been in a band,” says Julianna Barwick. “It’s a lot more satisfying for me just to do everything myself.”

If you’re in a hurry, or you’re reading this in a tweet, here are some choice Julianna Barwick keywords (thank you, every music writer!): æthereal, ghostly, and luminous. (Okay, that last one was me.) Those of you who can stick around for a little while might be more likely to dig Barwick; the Brooklyn vocalist’s simply, prettily constructed compositions — made entirely from layers and layers of her own voice — deal in an unfashionably glacial give and take.

But beyond the usual signifiers of “æthereal” or “ambient” music — that is, too much reverb, lots of gauzy sonic textures, and woozy loops unfurling forever into a warm, slo-mo celestial breeze (or something like that) — Barwick’s music also carries within it its own privacy, as though the songs had no idea you were listening. The six tracks on her Florine EP (Florid) pass by with the arresting indifference of a sunset — like shadows creeping across the room until they forget themselves. As with her previous Sanguine LP, she recorded Florine entirely at home, alone, with limited means, noisy neighbors, copters over the East River at all hours, and what sounded, over the phone, like thousands of angry birds.

“When I get back from tour, I’m moving my piano and all of my music stuff into a studio for a while,” she tells me. “I feel like this is going to be really good for my brain.” Think about any domestic relationship that lasts less than one lease and you know that a home can absorb all kinds of associative clutter. So after recording “millions” of essentially wordless songs over seven years in one place — and winning thousands of fans with the couple dozen she’s culled for release in the meantime — Barwick’s about ready to take what she’s taught herself and get out of the house.

“I’ve never been in a band,” she tells me with a voice that sounds more than a little wary of the thought. “I love to meet new people and everything — but as far as, like, a working relationship? I’m totally not into that. It’s a lot more satisfying for me just to do everything myself.”

Barwick grew up in Tulsa singing in opera choruses and church choirs, but she picked up a lot more about texture and technique than about teamwork. The glowing harmonies that brighten Florine rise from what sounds like an endless choir; in the end, though, it’s all Barwick. And the special contradiction of her music — that the more she sings, the less she actually says — is one of its most enduringly beautiful qualities. (So that’s due for a change as well.)

“I’m actually really excited about adding more instruments — piano, guitar, clarinet,” she concludes. “Maybe even songs with words — just to get my father to stop asking about it.”

VOICE COACH “If you are going to sing, you have to make sure it’s you singing,” says Eluvium’s Matthew Cooper.

That’s what like-vibed ambientalist Matthew Cooper (a/k/a Eluvium, who performs alongside Barwick at Great Scott next Thursday) had to do to complete his recent Similes (Temporary Residence). Like earlier Eluvium albums (there have been four), Similes was generated through Cooper’s careful process of gentle looping and layering, adding and subtracting, until the vaporous consistency of the songs hung properly in the air. In the midst of composing the album, he was called upon to score Matt McCormick’s minor-star-studded feature film Some Days Are Better Than Others.

Ghost stories For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.

Winged migration Since their start in the middle of the decade, Brown Bird have been one of the region's go-to chamber-folk outfits, with a couple of dark and stormy albums earning them a following in various nooks of New England. The release of their latest album, The Devil Dancing , feels like both an ending and a new beginning.

Injustice for all Scott Sturgeon loses his train of thought a couple of times during this interview. He's loopy from jet lag — which is unavoidable after a 20-hour flight from New Zealand (halfway around the planet from his non-residency at a squatted apartment building in New York City), where he's just finished a tour with his claim-to-fame band, Leftover Crack.

Wanting more After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.

Group hug Things aren’t always what they’re called — we know that flying fish don’t fly and starfish aren’t even fish.

Local heroes, ’09 edition The Rhode Island music community flourished in 2009, with new full-lengths from the Coming Weak, California Smile, and the pride of Cranston West and official big-leaguers Monty Are I, who released Break Through the Silence in September.

Local flavor Local journalist and acclaimed hip-hop scribe Andrew Martin has corralled a flavorful roster of Rhody-based rap talent on the Ocean State Sampler , 10 exclusive tracks available for free download.

Beyond Dilla and Dipset With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.

John Harbison plus 10 Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.

Shout it out! Sharks Come Cruisin' founder Mark Lambert is a Warwick native with a penchant for reworking and penning sea shanties from centuries past, often revised with rollicking punk flare — all thanks to the golden pipes of Quint, the shark-obsessed skipper in Jaws .

BOSTON PRIDE WEEK: OFF THE MAP | June 07, 2010 We may seem a little cranky, but us local gayfolk just love a parade, and we’re actually heartened by this annual influx of brothers and sisters from every state of New England and every letter of our ever-expanding acronym.

THE NEW GAY BARS | June 02, 2010 If I may channel the late, great Estelle Getty for a moment: picture it, Provincetown, 2009, a dashing young man with no discernible tan and an iffy T-Mobile signal languishes bored upon the sprawling patio of the Boatslip Resort.

ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI | BEFORE TODAY | June 01, 2010 If the gradual polishing of Ariel Pink’s sound — and it’s not all that much more polished — puts his loyalists at odds with his albums, I count that as good news.

MORE THAN HUMAN | May 26, 2010 It’s hard to talk about Janelle Monáe when your jaw’s fallen off.